Hi everyone. You probably don’t know me, 'cause I pretty much a lurker, but guess what? I just officially became a student at Swarthmore College today. I spent most of the day unpacking my stuff and setting up my dorm, and there will be various orientation activities for the next week.
Wish me luck, and if any of you have any advice for me, I would appreciate it!
Thanks!
Congratulations.
Advice? OK…
Meet at least two guys in your dorm tonight. Of that group of three, one of you won’t be back next semester because he flunked out. Don’t be that guy.
Go wander through the library. Pick you out a nice quiet table/desk somewhere. Plan on being there every day and doing most of your studying there. You’ll get more done than you will in the dorm.
Don’t fuck up your credit by accepting a credit card, maxing same, and not being able to pay it off.
Go to class on time, and fully prepared.
Bong hits for breakfast is a no-no on school days.
Get involved in something outside of class. Any campus club or organization will do, just follow your interests.
Attend some of the “Guest Speaker” type lectures from time to time.
The theatre department throws the best parties, if you’re into Animal House style debauchery.
Agree with your roommate(s) on a signal that means “Sex in Progress, Go Away”, and a reasonable time allowance therefor. Rubber band on the doorknob is/was popular back in day.
Don’t be a dumbass. Consider the worst possible downside of any proposed “this will be awesome” moment prior to acting. You’re almost an adult, so exercise some adult judgment…or face it.
Treat school like a job. Do classes, studying and homework from 9-5, get your assignments done early, and not at the last minute (the 9-5 thing helps with that), and then you will find you’ll actually have free time in the evenings to enjoy university life without all the stress, and your grades will be good!
Textbooks: the whole spiel about how you “need the latest edition” of your textbooks is 100% bullshit. Don’t spend 150$ on the 9th edition when you can spend 50$ or less on the 8th. Heck, go out and buy the 1st edition for 1.95$ on Amazon - for a lot of math/science textbooks it won’t make a whit of difference. Learn to use a table of contents and/or an index. In the unlikely event that your homework assignments (for grades) involve doing problems directly from the 9th edition, spend 10 minutes to a) borrow the book from a friend or b) borrow the book from the library and photocopy the relevant questions. For studying, if you can do the problems in one book, you can do them in another. And all that book money you save? Put 90% of it away for an emergency/food, and spend the remaining 10% on something fun.
Set up rules with your roommate now: how long garbage/takeout containers/used condoms are allowed to fester in/near the garbage can, how clean the shared space of the room needs to be, weekday vs weekend music/friends/study hours, etc. Understand your expectations of each other early, and always be willing to discuss issues before they become a problem.
You don’t mention your sex or orientation, but in the end, it doesn’t matter: protect yourself. No condom = no sex, whether or not the woman is on the pill/patch/depo/ring/whatever. Condoms do more than protect against pregnancies; you don’t want an STD. Let friends know where you’re going/who you’re with if you’re going home with someone, and trust your instincts.
In my experience (I’m on my second undergrad degree, so I dare say it’s considerable!), all those groups and cliques and popularity issues that existed in high school kind of evaporate in university. Meet new people, even ones you never thought you’d interact with, and try new things when you can (safely, of course!) Join a club or an intramural league, or start one if the things you’re interested in don’t already have clubs/teams.
Have fun.
Welcome to Philly! We’ll expect you to hop on the R5 and join us in town for our periodic DoperDinners.
Good luck in your new adventure! 
I don’t know if you’re a guy or a girl, so I’ll give advice for both:
If you’re a girl: Make an appointment with your OB/GYN and get on the Pill.
If you’re a guy: Go buy a box of condoms.
There’s a lot of sex in college (if you want it, that is). In high school I was a geeky kid who nobody liked, and I didn’t get much sex. In college, there were other geeky kids, many of them girls, and I had a lot of sex. Lots and lots of sex. If you’re planning on being sexually active, make use of birth control.
Also, some more general advice:
If you don’t have a car, make friends with someone who does.
Plan to study two hours for every one hour of classroom time.
Do things besides study or you will go insane.
Schedule time to exercise. Stick to that schedule, and do not vary from it.
Realize that just because you can go back for seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths at every meal doesn’t mean that you should.
If religion is a part of your life, find a group from your denomination on campus and make time for worship.
If you do this, make a friend or two in the class so that you can check to see what homework problems have changed. The order of the problems in many of the math books that I’ve looked at change from edition to edition. I only know this because I was a student rep for the book selection committee in my department and sat down and compared various editions. Teachers are usually pretty upfront about if having a certain edition is necessary.
You’re practically on top of the train into Philly - be sure to make use of it if you don’t have a car. The buses used to be pretty good (and cheap) for getting around the rest of the area, so I assume they still are. Avoid Chester, which is one of the East Coast’s longest lasting slums. (Camden’s worth skipping, too, except for the aquarium.)
You’re living on one of the most gorgeous arboretums in the area. Be sure to check out the gardens on campus while it’s all still blooming, though they still look great in the fall. (The town itself is pretty, too, so it’s worth wandering around, though there’s not much there other than houses.)
Natives to the area know that the town is pronounced “Swathmore”. I believe that most of the students will pronounce both the school and the town with the “r” - this is, of course, completely wrong, but it will at least help you sort out who is who.
This list is overall the best going-into-college list I’ve seen, 'specially number 3.
Also- to slightly modify #5- if you really want to experiment with things heavier than pot, wait until you are OUT of school.
A lot of people think that college is the right place for drugs, but I would have to say if you are going to, it’s the obligatory ‘year-off’ after school you should wait for. Stuff to accomplish in school. Unless it is a philosophy major, in which case, forget what I just said about #5. And I don’t mean that to be snarky- drugs can help quite a bit in philosophy.
Good luck, phi. I too am a lurker starting college, although I still have two weeks until I head out.
I’m a theatre major, so I’m wondering if Oakminster’s claim about their parties is true…
Thanks everyone! I’m going to bookmark this thread; The advice is both great and appreciated.
And twickster, you’ll have to tell me more about these DoperDinners…
Don’t get in the habit of skipping class. Seriously, it’s very easy to do and you’ll regret it if you care about your GPA.
Balance your beer/bong rips/WOW/whatever your vice is time along with joining a club or playing sports or something else more productive. If you don’t have to work you will have a LOT of free time, and I saw too many smart kids drink/whatever too much and end up back home.
Always always always wear a condom, no matter what.
Know your state’s underage drinking laws so you don’t get in trouble. A LOT of kids I knew also got MIP tickets freshman year and had to pay lawyers and whatnot. Usually it means “drop your beer and don’t let a cop see you.”
Get to know your professors! Seriously. Especially the ones in your major dept. Don’t be a kiss ass but if you have a question, ask it, etc. Once I started actually talking to my professors, my college experience got a lot better, and more opportunities were opened up to me.
I don’t know if I can agree with buying all older textbooks. Yes the textbook market is a total ripoff, but sometimes you can’t get away with old-ass editions. I’m in grad school now and the bookstore tries to get $200 for every damn book, even paperback ones. I get them from Amazon Marketplace for $70 or less. I only had a book or two in undergrad (2 schools) that were $100 or more - if you can find out the books you need ahead of time use the internet. Then you can get the same editions AND save money. But you’ll figure out over time what best works for you.
Try to be as cool with your roommate as you can. I had a crappy roomie freshman year and it made for an uncool living situation.
Have some fun. College is awesome, even when it kinda sucks. I’ve been out over a year and I miss it a lot.
Save what money you can on buying textbooks, but do the reading. Doing the reading before class is one of the best things you can do to help yourself actually learn what you came there to learn. It may sometimes be overkill for passing the tests, but in the end, you want to know stuff. This will help you get to know your professors, because they can tell who does the reading. A couple of years back the son of a Doper went go to college (I remember because we did a thread just like this for him) and had to drop out somewhere in the first semester because his decision to save money by not buying any textbooks backfired on him in a big way. There is money to be saved by buying used, reading reserve copies in the library, and sharing with a friend you trust not to screw you over come crunch time. But don’t miss the forest for the trees.
Pay attention to where your classes are physically located when you set up your schedule. You will need to get from point A to point B in a short amount of time, sometimes in bad weather carrying a bunch of crap.
If you will be going to school with a lot of people who have way more money than you, don’t get delusional and try to keep up with their lifestyle. This is how my freshman roommate wound up not coming back sophomore year.
You don’t need to Facebook friend everyone you meet once at a party, but take advantage of the tools we have now to stay in touch with the people you do get to know. They will be one of the best things you can get out of college.
Nothing too exciting – but we usually get together once or twice a year, sometimes when a Doper is coming in from out of time, sometimes for no particular reason. Keep an eye on MPSIMS, which is where organizational threads run.
I was an undergrad in the dark ages. Back then we had to walk 10 miles barefoot in the snow for a theatre party, uphill both ways…but I digress.
If people aren’t getting wasted and/or naked at cast parties, y’all are doing it wrong.